I am a Managing Partner at Brookside Strategies, LLC, an energy and utility management consulting firm based in Darien, Connecticut. I've spilled blood, sweat and tears grappling with the full spectrum of barriers and misconceptions about distributed generation and energy-efficiency technologies. Previously, I practiced law in New York City at Paul Weiss Rifkind Garrison & Wharton, LLP and Jenner & Block, LLP. I also attended journalism school at Columbia University and earned a JD at Stanford Law School. I've written about energy and environmental issues for Forbes, The Nation, Mother Jones and several other publications. I am the Chair of the Northeast Clean Heat and Power Initiative. Drop me a line - or two - at wmp@cleanbeta.com.

Resiliency Portfolio Standards: Turning Smart Grids into Strong Grids

Rives Taylor, an architect at the global design firm Gensler, calls this the “prairie rule” of survival, which he describes as a model for engineering resilient systems in a brilliant essay published by the Urban Land Institute last year.

[A prairie fire] jump-starts an elegant system of rebirth. Species of plants, insects, and bacteria that lay dormant in the soil are brought to life, energized and fertilized by the super-heat of the fire . . . Natural selection kept those survivor species viable in the soil as a plan for the future. Life begins again, quickly.

Engineered resilience reflects the tendency of a system to stabilize at or near an equilibrium state, “where resistance to disturbance and speed of return to the equilibrium are used to measure the property,” according the National Academy of Sciences.

When prairies burn, they do not die.

The same cannot be said for the electric power grid. On the contrary, the electric grid has become a cautionary tale for the risks of systemic collapse.

The number of U.S. power outages affecting 50,000 or more consumers increased from 149 between 2000 and 2004 to 349 between 2005 and 2009, according to the smart-grid visionary Massoud Amin, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota. Problems on the power grid cost U.S. consumers an estimated $150 billion annually.

James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and venture capitalist at Lux Capital, has described the U.S. electric power grid as “the security equivalent of a house left with the door unlocked, the windows open, and millions of dollars of jewelry and home entertainment equipment strewn about for the taking.”

“And when the electrical grid fails,” Woolsey adds, “it is not only the lights that go out.”

Power blackouts are like powder-kegged dominos. When the grid goes down, it takes critical communications and transportation systems down with it. Ditto “911″ and state emergency communication centers, first responder stations, hospitals, control centers, traffic signals and critical infrastructure like water pumping and filtration systems.

In a recently de-classified study advising the U.S. Navy to abandon plans for privatizing the military utility systems, the U.S. Naval Office of Inspector General explained the gravity of these challenges:

Evaluation of the vulnerabilities of our national electric utility networks reveals weaknesses that, if exploited, ‘…could result in a long-term, multi-state blackout. While power might be restored in parts of the regions within a matter of days or weeks, acute shortages could mandate rolling blackouts for as long as several years.’ An indication of these vulnerabilities was demonstrated during the power outage that struck the northeast region of the United States in August 2003.

Although this was a widespread outage, neither the cause nor the recovery time should be used to compare it with a deliberate, well coordinated terrorist attack on the electrical transmission system. In addition to crippling the economy, an extended regional power outage would have catastrophic effects on the Navy’s ability to accomplish its mission.

The ability of critical facilities to carry out their mission during an emergency depends on the availability of power. When the grid goes down, distributed power is often the last line of defense for mission-critical first responder facilities. Smaller-scale, on-site clean energy technologies can “harden” critical facilities by providing high-quality “24×7″ power to uninterruptible electronic and communications systems during a grid outage.

Unfortunately, the most prevalent form of distributed generation – diesel generators – are also the least reliable form of distributed generation. Diesel generators have a history of failure in the clutch of a crisis, including the July 1999 power outage in New York City and the massive power outages in the eastern United States in August 2003.

In a recent email exchange, Joe Camean, Vice President and Director of Power and Utility Engineering Services at Farmington, CT-based van Zelm Engineers, explained why back-up diesel generators are prone to performance problems:

Machines generally grossly oversized with actual running loads at ~30% of rated capacity (selections are over conservative and Owners want future capacity that never materializes) – machines not exercised at sufficient load.

Stored fuel quality deteriorates so much that after one day or less of sustained operation fuel systems plug up, low load operation causes wet stack conditions with sludge and deposition in turbochargers – when called to run at sustained load turbo’s fail and units trip off line.

Distributed power technologies that operate all or most of the time are more reliable and cleaner than those that operate only when the grid goes down precisely because they operate all of the time. They are cleaner for the same reason.

Resiliency Portfolio Standards are one of the more persuasive proposals I have encountered that would prevent this problem in the future. [DISCLOSURE: I am employed by a distributed power company that would likely benefit from such a policy] Charlie Fox, the former deputy secretary of energy for New York State Governor George Pataki, first floated the Resiliency Portfolio Standard concept at a high-level clean energy policy forum in Massachusetts two months ago.

In an email sent this morning, Fox explained the logic like so:

Over thirty states now have Renewable Portfolio Standards, these program are familiar to developers, utilities, and policymakers – and they have been demonstrated to work. with a simple tweak this model could be used to spur investments in resilient energy systems.

The idea would work like this: a megawatt hour generated by an eligible project would be permitted to sell ‘reliability attributes’ in just the same way that renewable generators now sell ‘renewable attributes’ under existing programs. The ‘resiliency attributes’ might include the ability to isolate from the grid during an outage, very high capacity factor, location, or elevation above storm surge zones. Each state could define the resiliency attributes that match the exposures that it faces.

A key advantage of a Resiliency Portfolio Standard is that it could be implemented very quickly in many states where the legislation needed to do so already exists.

Simply put, while history may have a tendency to repeat itself, in the case of Superstorm Sandy, it need not.

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Somehow, I seem to be missing, perhaps misunderstanding, some points in your article.

First, with regards to the “prairie fire rule”…(“forests don’t die”) analogy you refer to, even though I personaly know and respect Rives Taylor, I don’t quite understand how this relates to power grids. Unlike natural systems, after they “go down”, they don’t come back stronger unless we spend lots more money to upgrade them. Sure, if you’re urging redundancy, that’s great, and that comes at a cost too, albiet one representing sensible and necessary risk mitigation investment. So yes, distributed systems, in general, do make sense.

The second problem I have is your use of the term “clean energy technologies” (as distributed systens). Here, if you’re referring to wind (or solar), they combine really ugly attributes of high cost/inefficiency, limited capacity and unreliability (daily/seasonal and peak needs). Both require construction of a “spinning reserve” power source equal to their installed capacity (typically natural gas) which is operated in its most inefficient mode to balance out the grid when fluctuations occur (pretty much always). The exception is hydropower, which environmental lobbies seem to hate as much as they do fossils.

Then finally, you refer to RPS as a good model for resiliency standards. RPS has proven to be a disaster for taxpayers and ratepayers, but a windfall (pun intended)for rent-seeking crony capitalists. In my jaded view, RPS is a great model for a failed strategy that should be ended. Wind and solar would go out of business immediately were it not for mandated use and enormous subsidies.

But hey, these are just my opinions, and you are certainly entitled to yours. After all, it’s your column.